Snakes and Schools
by Victory to the Shard
Summary: Naruto Cross. Harry's second year is not nearly as much like his first year as he expected...
1. Prologue

The bird was most unusual for this part of Rice Country, and the fact that it had a scroll attached to its leg had only increased how suspicious it was. Combined with the patient, oddly intelligent gaze it had fixed upon him, Orochimaru had been more intrigued than concerned. While there was always the possibility that it was, in fact, some sort of assassination attempt, exploding tags had been used in this fashion before, and Orochimaru _was_ an S-class missing nin liked by no one outside his village, but just how blatantly suspicious this whole thing was suggested either that it was the work of an amateur assassin or that it was a non-hostile gesture of some sort. The former was unlikely, though not inconcievable, but the latter... there was no one on the face of this world that had any interest in giving Orochimaru a gift, just talking to him, or anything similar, excepting his own extremely loyal Sound ninja. Given that he had hand-picked all the ones that would ever dare to risk his wrath in this manner, and he couldn't recall _any_ of them using owls in any way, shape, or form, this was unusual indeed. Thus, instead of putting a kunai through one of its eyes and putting the matter out of his head, Orochimaru had sent Kabuto to retrieve someone to test how safe the scroll and bird were. Kabuto had returned, not five minutes later, with Karin, which though not what Orochimaru had actually meant (He had, in fact, meant for Kabuto to retrieve one of his cannon fodder grunts that no one would miss if they died), was perfectly acceptable and possibly even better in its own way.

After a verbal nudge from Orochimaru, Kabuto had explained what was required of Karin, whom was quick to comply. After several minutes of intense study (Wherein Orochimaru occupied himself through a staring contest with the bird. He lost, to his amusement), she declared the scroll completely clean, but the bird weird. Orochimaru had gone through his 'I am pleased with you' routine, dismissed the girl without any explanation whatsoever, and once she was gone, politely asked the bird to put down the scroll and leave. He'd already deduced it was, if not a summon per se, certainly intelligent enough to rival them in cognitive ability, and thus was completely unsurprised when it did indeed remove the scroll and fly out the window it had first arrived through. The odd little bow it had sketched was sufficiently ridiculous to amuse him, but once it was gone, his attention moved back to the scroll, which he retrieved himself. Kabuto was trustworthy, in his own way, but Orochimaru suspected that the bird was only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, in terms of just how unusual this would be, and he felt it might be worth his personal attention.

Initially, the scroll was a little odd, but other than an oddly specific reference to Orochimaru's exact current location, it was just a series of nonsense titles and a name he didn't recognize. _How dull _. He read through the next part with increasingly thin patience; it was the sort of 'talking without speaking' nonsense that _so_ vexed him to listen to. The grammar was also sufficiently poor that the little information contained in the kanji took far longer to coax out than it really should've, further irritating the the Snake Sannin. The scroll continued in this long, meandering, badly-written manner for quite some time before finally getting to the point. Orochimaru smirked when he read what was being asked of him. His smirk grew when the scale became clear, and he almost laughed aloud when he saw what was being offered in exhange. It was ridiculous. A paltry. They wanted the services of his entire village... and offered so little in exchange? Oh, certainly, the medical services sounded nice in theory, but Kabuto probably the best medic-nin in existence short of Tsunade, and the library access would be nice (Knowledge is, after all, _power_), and some of the other things offered were intriguing, but it simply wasn't enough. It was quite amusing that this... person... had the gall to attempt to hire the infamous S-class missing-nin, Snake Sannin Orochimaru, as well all those at his command, for so very _little_, but it was also rather insulting. It was odd, though. He couldn't imagine someone being genius enough to penetrate Sound's extensive security, right under his very nose, and yet also _stupid_ enough to think he would ever go for such an absurd offer.

It was all very strange. Amusing, annoying, intriguing, and ridiculous all at the same time. In a way, it would almost justify accepting the offer in its own right, just to meet the fool who concocted this idiocy, but... only almost. Orochimaru was, in fact, going to pass it over to Kabuto for his own inspection, just to hear the medic-nin's bland response to this absurdity (Kabuto was always amusing to watch), when a smaller scroll dropped out of the first. This was exceedingly odd, not because something had been hidden away like that, but rather because none of the three ninja to see this scroll had noticed the smaller one inside. Even stranger, when Orochimaru picked it up (Ready with a dozen different jutsu for surviving any booby-trap inside), he realized that there were not words here, but instead several pictures. Moving pictures, more specifically. What sort of jutsu could create moving images like this? But the most interesting thing was not the pictures themselves, but rather what they were _showing_.

In one picture a boy, no older than twelve, held out a toy stick, his lips moved, and a burst of flame erupted from the toy. This motion repeated over and over. A second picture, looping too, instead show a child lifting a large, heavy box. Without touching it. Again, a stick was involved. The third repeating image was of a man mounting what appeared to be a broom, and proceeding to _fly_ on it. There were a half-dozen more images in this vein, showing oddly dressed people doing odd things, which were increasingly implausible by ninja standards. Orochimaru was seriously reconsidering his refusal when he reached the final image, a colorful picture depicting an incredibly **old** man. If the Legendary Three were past their sell-by date, than this man was the stuff in the fridge that tried to eat _you_. His age alone was a startling thing to see, but then an even more incredible thing occured.

"Hello."

It spoke.


	2. Suspicious Beginnings

Harry was growing increasingly paranoid.

In part, this was due to how his first year had ended. After all, one of the teachers, the meekest and least scary of them all, had turned out to be a host for Voldemort, bent on ressurecting the Dark Lord and killing Harry. However, that wasn't all. If it had been, the paranoia would've worn off within a couple of weeks, even if the nightmares would've taken longer to fade than that. No, there was something else, and the 'something' had been stalking Harry for most, if not all of his summer break. He wasn't sure when it had started following him, nor what it was, but he was understandably rather worried that it was a minion of Voldemort's. Certainly, whoever (Whatever?) they were was being extremely secretive about it. It was, in fact, an enormous fluke that he knew they were there at all. A fluke he was grateful for, certainly, but a fluke nonetheless. The whole thing was disturbing, frightening, and worrisome, and he had already resolved to speak to Dumbledore on it as soon as he could. Unfortunately, he didn't have any way of contacting the Headmaster while living with the Dursleys, and he was starting to wonder if he was going to be killed before he had the chance. Admittedly, there'd been nothing he could construe as an attempted attack in the entire time, and whoever was watching him had thus far seemed content with just that: watching him, but Harry quite reasonably attributed this to the fact that he was almost never in a good position _to _be secretly killed. After all, he had no friends that he visited, which meant no walking out in the open on his own, and any time he left the house at all was when the Dursley's were driving somewhere and had been unable (Or unwilling) to leave him alone in the house, in which case he was constantly in their presence to some degree. Not exactly secretive. Even so, there had been at least three separate occasions where Harry _had_ been left alone for an extended period of time, in the house, with no significant safeguards in place that Harry knew of. It wasn't as though the Dursley's had good home security. Yet there hadn't been even the slightest sign of an attempt to break in and kill him.

Things went on in this vein the whole vacation. Harry grew more paranoid, his watcher didn't seem to do anything, and the Dursley's were completely terrified of Wizard Harry, painfully unaware that he wasn't allowed to do magic off school grounds as yet. (Not that _he_ was ever going to tell them that) Harry was understandably surprised when he eventually found himself in front of the Hogwarts Express without anything terrible happening. Stranger yet was the presence of a number of oddly dressed folks, wearing face-concealing masks, body-shrouding robes (Not entirely unlike wizard robes), and a somewhat frightening attitude. He had a few ideas as to what they might be, but a more pressing consideration was why didn't he recall seeing anyone like this last year? It was possible that he just didn't notice, it wasn't as though he knew anything at all about the wizarding world at the time, and the robes _were_ fairly similar to what wizards and witches wore, other than the hood. Still, it seemed odd that he wouldn't remember them.

Harry became even more convinced that this was new when he was stopped, subjected to a thorough search, and stamped on the forehead with something by two of the figures before being allowed on the train. He noted, while searching for Ron and Hermione, that everyone had a symbol on their head, though _what_ that symbol was and meant, he had no idea. He presumed the one on his forehead was the same. Interestingly, nobody recognized him this time, not even Draco (Whom bumped into him with a "watch where you're going, idiot", never mind that he was the one that wasn't paying attention), which he supposed was due to his scar being covered up by the ink. At least, it looked like ink, though it was odd that it hadn't run any. Either way, he eventually found Ron and Hermione, though it took a bit of work to convince them that, yes, they were looking at good ol' Harry, not some random stranger. From there, conversation wandered fairly quickly through Harry's time with the Dursley's, including his increasingly paranoid suspicion that someone had been watching him, and on in short order to the topic of the strange people. Hermione and Ron both confirmed Harry's suspicion that, no, they had _not_ been here last year, and all three of them noted quietly, as the train started moving, that the people were patrolling the halls of the train.

Their conversation largely died down after that, other than the usual small talk. Eventually, Hermione commented, with a frown, that it was getting rather late and yet no sweets cart or the like had come by. Shortly after, Ron noted that he hadn't seen anyone other than the weirdos wandering the halls, no Neville looking for Trevor, no Draco looking for trouble, no one at _all_. While the it was possible that this was just an odd coincidence, the three friends agreed that it almost certainly had something to do with the masked patrollers. They resolved to find out who and/or _what _these strangers were, and more importantly, what they were doing here. Other than the odd horseless carriages and, of course, the strangers, the rest of the trip was quiet and unremarkable.

The question of what these people were doing here was answered at last in the Great Hall, during Dumbledore's post-feast speech, when he explained that the people were neither Hogwarts staff nor students, but rather were guards hired to help protect the students. Students were advised not to disobey the guards, were not to harass the guards when they were on duty, and extra importance was placed on not trying to sneak around unauthorized. The Forbidden Forest was, as always, called _forbidden_ for a reason, and Filch had a new, longer list of items not allowed on Hogwarts grounds. This year's Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, was introduced (Harry was disturbed when he noticed how most of the female students seemed to, for lack of a better word, _swoon _at Lockhart's introduction) indicating himself with a jaunty little wave but otherwise doing nothing in particular. Snape somehow managed to look moodier than Harry ever remembered him being, so much so that he hadn't glared at Harry even once the entire time. The boy was left to wonder what, exactly, could vex Snape so.

Inevitably, Dumbledore finished speaking and sent everyone to their dorms with a hearty good night, at which point it occured to Harry that he hadn't seen the Sorting occur. From there he realized he hadn't seen the first-year students at all since Hagrid had taken them on the boats, which marked up as yet another odd thing this year. Then he remembered his desire to speak to Dumbledore about his strange stalker, but found himself unable to act on this desire due to the presence of the guards, who were once more escorting everyone, this time to their dorms, and would not allow him to leave for any reason at all. In fact, claiming he needed to go to the bathroom merely led to one of them escorting him away from the rest of the group to one of the restrooms. He couldn't get any _real_ privacy to escape; they were waiting right outside the stall! Which was bothersome not just because he wasn't going to be visiting Dumbledore tonight at this rate, but also because of the uncomfortable realization that he had no clue what gender this particular guard was. They had spoken, if only to say "follow me", but their voice was neither feminine nor masculine, and the all-concealing outfit hid all clues to their identity, excepting their hair, which was just barely visible. That it was black and straight was not very informative at all.

The only reason the whole ordeal wasn't a _complete_ waste was because he really had needed to go to the bathroom pretty badly.

From there the guard escorted Harry straight to the Gryffindor dorm, all but dragging him there. Upon reaching the Fat Lady's portrait, instead of saying a password, they did... _something_ with their hands, Harry couldn't see it, it happened too fast, but whatever it was apparently satisfied the Fat Lady, because the picture swung out of the way, at which point the guard practically shoved him in and left. Harry wasn't sure how to feel about that, nor about the rather ominous _click_ he heard when the portrait was shut entirely, and decided to instead speak to Ron and Hermione. He was surprised to learn that neither of them had noticed the lack of first-years in the Hall, though he was a bit less surprised to learn that it was because Hermione had been focused on Lockhart and Ron on the food. Harry proceeded to cover his bathroom experience, expressing concern as to whether this treatment would continue throughout the year. Hermione firmly believed that it would be over in short order and not to worry, while Ron was of the opinion that it was probably some horrible plot on Snape's part to make everyone miserable. Harry shot down this plan by pointing out how unhappy Snape was, which pleased Ron and left Hermione with a thoughtful look on her face, but they were cut off by a round of yawns. Rather than pursuing further discussion, the three friends bid each other sleepy good nights, and went to bed, peripherally noting the continuing lack of first-year faces in the dorm.

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When Harry awoke, it was to an empty room. Shrugging off his his apparent lateness to wake, he dressed properly, took care of hygiene, and headed down to the dorm, only to find that it, too, was empty, leaving him to wonder what could have had everyone in such a rush to leave that Ron didn't even bother to wake him. Still, this was unlikely to be a problem. They didn't have class for a few days yet, if he recalled correctly, and anything important happening, well, Hermione or Ron would fill him in later if it was that big a deal. They were good friends like that. Odd how no one was left in the dorm, but then again, it _was_ a very nice day outside. So putting the whole thing out of his mind, Harry decided to head down to the Great Hall and see if there was anything to eat. He was rather hungry. Along the way, he noted, to himself, the complete lack of guards, and realized Hermione was probably going to gloat about being right, as always. So caught up was he in this scenario, imagining how Ron would roll his eyes and protest the whole thing as a lucky guess on her part or something like that, that it took him quite some time before he noticed that it wasn't just the guards that weren't around. He hadn't seen any of the students, nor the teachers, nor, when he gave it further thought, had he spotted Peeves or even one ghost. And that is when he noticed the blood.

It wasn't that alarming, not really, not truly. It was only a little bit of blood, probably somebody scraped their knee, or had a nosebleed, or something, but somehow it seemed ominous. It only got worse when he spotted another bit of blood. And another. And another. And yet another, becoming first a distinct trail, and then a stream, and then a wider stream, and so on until the entire floor and parts of the walls were coated in blood. On one level, Harry found himself extremely worried, and yet he continued to put one foot in front of the other, not panicking in any discernable manner, still heading towards the Great Hall. When the blood on the walls began to take on shapes, he found himself wondering who, or perhaps what, would go through all this effort, though as the shapes became increasingly snake-like, his thoughts turned instead to what it might mean, even as another part of him was appalled at how calm he was. Just how much blood would it take to paint this much corridor red, anyway? A lot more than he wanted to think about, that much he knew for certain. The thought alone made him ill. He was sure Hermione would be able to tell him how many people would have to be sucked dry to produce this quantity of blood. Part of him wondered if some of this blood was, in fact, hers.

He felt sick.

At last he turned a corner, immediately wondering just how long that hall had gone on, and found himself before the doors of the Great Hall. They were clean of blood, but were nonetheless coated in designs resembling snakes. It occured to him that this probably meant Slytherin fancied itself in charge of Hogwarts now, but that thought fled into the aether as he reached out, almost against his own will, to open the enormous doors. In a way, he was surprised at how readily the massive doors turned on their hinges, with nary a squeak, but he supposed that magic might have something to do with it, and turned his attention to the room beyond. Immediately he noticed that the tables and chairs both students and stuff sat upon were gone. From there his attention wandered over the odd stains on the floor and walls, some black like ash, others yellow, or green, or something ugly in between, on to the markings on the walls, once again of snakes. Enormous snakes, vicious snakes, looking capable of taking on a dragon with sheer unpleasant force of will, etched into the wall in enormous detail. Harry noticed he was stalling, trying not to look into the center of the room. He supposed that was a natural reaction, and looked anyway.

There he saw a pile of massive bones, only they were not nice and clean, bleached white, but rather had muscle, flesh, and of course blood, always with the blood, staining them. It was grisly, though a part of him wondered what would make such messy kills, and then go through all the effort of shoving them into such a formation. Perhaps it was the man... thing... man... man-thing? The being standing upon it. This... person, whoever they were, seemed almost like a monster in a man's skin, or flesh at least. Pale, with eyes like a snake (And not metaphorically, either), and an ease of holding himself atop all this death that left Harry feeling horrified and, of all things, slightly envious. Most unnerving of all was the way the thing was watching him intently, with a small smirk on its face and a tilt to its head that somehow conveyed amusement. The creature reminded him of Voldemort, on some deeper level, but it was not that man. Even as Harry found himself in something of a staring contest with this repulsive entity, a part of him noticed the massive snake rearing up behind the other, eyes closed and mouth wide open, preparing to strike. And then a voice that was not human rang out, though the other's mouth did not move, and Harry knew he was going to die. The voice said so.

And then he awoke.


	3. Startling Revelations

Harry found himself in his bed, clutching at his scar, though he felt nothing from it, panting and sweating and wondering what _that_ was. At the same time, he was extremely grateful that it was, in fact, _just _a dream, nothing more... though a part of him feared that there was some sort of truth to it. After a few minutes, Harry saw that it was still dark outside, and found himself drifting back to sleep in spite of his best intentions. Just before his eyes closed, he would've _sworn_ he heard the voice from his nightmare, but then he was in a deep dreamless sleep.

When he awoke in the morning, he concluded he had been very tired indeed to see something from his dream while still awake.

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A week passed, and Hermione was indeed proved correct; after the first day, the guards ceased escorting everyone everywhere, instead focusing their attentions on entrances, exits, and, to the consternation and amusement of various students, even some of the windows. However, Harry paid little attention to these details, more concerned by other things. Classes were unusually short and none of the teachers, not even Snape, assigned _any_ homework, and the work they did in the class was exclusively review of last year's lessons. Nor had they (Or anyone else, at least in the Gryffindor dorm) attended a Defense Against the Dark Arts class. They had actually entered the classroom (Harry had been unsure what to think of the enormous number of smiling pictures of Professor Lockhart), only to discover that no one was there except other, equally confused students. When Professor Lockhart _had_ arrived, he seemed to not notice them until someone spoke, at which point he jumped as though stung, whirled around, and demanded to know _what_ they were doing here. The conversation that ensued was very confusing to Harry, and ended in the Professor all but shoving them into the hall, and telling them not to return until notified by a teacher. On top of this all this strangeness, the first year students hadn't been seen by _anyone_. At least, no one was claiming to have seen them.

Draco didn't seem to respond well to the lack of work, something Harry felt was a bizarre irony, and was apparently intent on occupying himself by harrassing Harry, Ron, and Hermione. It was very frustrating, and also rather strange; Draco would often segue straight from antagonizing, insulting, and generally sneering at Harry and his friends right into odd, harmless sentences ("...filthy mudblood- and that is why Slytherin is better than Gryffindor.") or even acting in a manner suggesting one of the three friends had _done_ something to him. It had taken Harry four entire days of this to realize that Draco always did these things when one of the guards was approaching hearing range. The realization had infuriated him, as it was suddenly clear that Draco had been attempting to get Harry and his friends into serious trouble, and yet it had also puzzled him, because the guards had never responded to these conversations. While it was nice to not be given detention for something he hadn't even done, it raised questions of just how trustworthy these guards were, if they were so willing to ignore what were, to all appearances, unpleasant altercations.

Hermione had read all the books for the year by the sixth day and began complaining about the light workload. A sarcastic comment from Ron had lead to her checking out books for _third_-years from the library, which had exasperated Ron ("You want to _make_ work for yourself instead of relaxing while you still can!?"), while Harry was carefully neutral, entirely certain he wanted no part in this. Ron had focused his efforts on such things as chess games and napping outside in the sun, partly because there was no homework to fill his idle time, and partly because he'd wanted to do this sort of thing throughout the entire first year and had never really gotten a proper chance to relax. Even so, he began to get restless, too, and Harry found yet another reason to avoid his two friends for the moment. (The first being Hermione's behavior)

On that note, he'd been trying to reach Dumbledore, but had been thoroughly foiled at every turn. First he'd just searched the halls manually, since students were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted other than leaving the actual grounds during these strange half-days, when it wasn't bedtime or class time. That hadn't worked at all, and he'd had to do a bit of asking around to determine the location of Dumbledore's office, which had apparently been moved to someplace else. Once he'd gotten some directions (From a Hufflepuff girl who'd seemed very, very bored), it had seemed like an easy thing, but he'd been stopped by three of the guards before he was anywhere near the location! One of them had asked if he had any bussiness with the Headmaster, Harry had told them he needed to talk to Dumbledore, they'd asked what about, and when he hadn't been willing to tell them, he'd been turned away. Even so, this hadn't deterred Harry, and he'd set out on the next day with his cloak (The invisibility one, of course) to sneak past the guards. _That_, by far, was the worst failure of his attempts. He'd actually gotten a bit farther than last time, but then about a dozen things had come shooting at him, and he'd only avoided being hit by them by backing up _very_ hastily. Instead, they'd hit the cloak and pinned it to the _stone floor_, where he was finally able to make out the features of the objects. To be blunt, they were knives of some sort, and that realization had made Harry very, very glad indeed to have not been hit, though he had little time to think on it, since his scramble to avoid being skewered had, in combination with one edge of the cloak being trapped, lead to him losing his balance. So he fell, and in fact fell out from under the cloak itself.

Of course, in a roundabout sort of way this _did_ lead to him standing in front of Dumbledore, albeit not in quite the manner he'd intended. Apparently the knives belonged to the guards (Which lead to the question "What sort of wizard uses knives?", but Harry had more pressing concerns), and once they had ascertained he was a student instead of... whatever they'd thought he was, they had confiscated his cloak, retrieved their knives, dragged him before Dumbledore, and explained the situation in very few words. They were also rather unpleasant words, describing what he'd done in a very unflattering manner. This was, of course, all done while holding Harry at knife-point. Dumbledore had been understanding, however, and had asked for Harry's version of the events, which had lead to the explanation that he'd wanted to talk to the Professer, which had further lead to him explaining about his concerns of an assassin after him. From there, things got very surreal, with Dumbledore smiling like nothing was wrong, two of the guards chuckling for some reason or another, and the man-monster from Harry's dream waltzing in just, Harry suddenly felt, to prove that the universe hated him.


	4. A Vile Turn

Looking back on it, Harry was vaguely embarrassed. His reaction was, of course, totally justified, but screaming something accusatory while pointing at the man and gibbering about how he was going to 'kill us all!' still looked crazy. It had only gotten worse when the man spoke, apparently unconcerned by Harry's outburst, asking him where he'd gotten the cloak. The problem was, of course, that the man's voice was _not_ the horrible voice from his dream. Oh, sure, it made his skin crawl a little, for reasons he didn't know how to put into words, but it nonetheless wasn't the monstrous voice that had promised death. Then, of course, Dumbledore dragged out of Harry _why_ he'd responded so badly, which was just salt in the wound. Bad enough that he was wrong, but that he'd listened to a nightmare? Fortunately, before he could start beating himself up mentally too much, Dumbledore had gently explained that dreams are often prophetic to some degree or another, but also that the obvious intepretation is not neccessarilly the correct one. Which had, in fact, made Harry feel better. Just a little. After that, he was calm enough to ask why they'd been so amused, at which point the dream-man had explained that the stalker had, in fact, been one of his 'ninja' (Which threw Harry for a moment. Ninja?) watching over Harry to _foil_ spies and assassins from Voldemort. It was very startling to hear someone other than himself or Dumbledore actually _say_ the name, sufficiently so that it took a moment for the rest of the explanation to register. Harry was both relieved and appalled, given that he'd actually been _safer_ than ever before, and yet the invasion of his privacy, without asking permission, was repulsive. It was also irritating, because all his worrying had been for _nothing_, and nobody had seen fit to inform him of what was actually going on.

Then the man had asked once more about the cloak, Harry had explained it was an heirloom and that he knew nothing more than that, and the man had seemed almost mournful for a moment, murmuring something Harry didn't catch. Or perhaps heard, but didn't understand, he wasn't entirely certain. Whatever the case, Dumbledore had said something encouraging, and, after asking Harry if he wanted to speak on anything else (He hadn't), ushered him out the door. After a moment, he'd popped back out of the office and handed Harry the invisibility cloak with a word to be more careful in the future.

Harry had remained standing there in a daze until one of the guards ("'Ninja'", Harry had reminded himself) had firmly ordered him to return to his dorm.

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When the next week had come, classes had become considerably more difficult, on a level more akin to what Harry had originally anticipated. Ron quite naturally bemoaned the loss of all his free time, while Hermione had been rather more enthusiastic. She still read the third-year books, though, which lead to more incredulous remarks from Ron, seeming to find the next year's work far more interesting than this year's. Harry was, as before, uninvolved, though now it was for an entirely different set of reasons. Before, he'd been more concerned with not being seen as 'taking a side'. During this latest week he was instead far more concerned with the man from his dream, or more accurately, the fact that the man seemed to be following Harry, and doing so quite blatantly. Every class Harry was in the man was always standing to the side, watching everything to some degree or another, but with his focus primarily on Harry. It was very disturbing, though Harry was at least relieved to discover that his classmates unanimously considered the strange man to be... creepy, bluntly put. It made him feel a bit better about his own concerns, suggesting they weren't entirely unfounded. Not only that, but the first year students _still_ hadn't shown up, which was really starting to worry Harry. He liked and trusted Hagrid, certainly, but he'd begun to wonder if perhaps Hagrid had accidentally fed the entire lot to a 'cute' sea monster or something of the sort along the way to the castle...

At some point he realized he didn't actually know the creepy man's name. Somehow, this seemed an appropriate capstone to the whole thing.

Schoolwork was challenging, but not difficult. Snape was a jerk. Draco harrassed Harry some more, though less than the previous week, and with much less enthusiasm, probably in part due to the guards' (_Ninja _) lack of response. Harry didn't respond to Draco much, either, increasingly feeling that the blonde was small potatoes, and not worth the effort. Not when there a man stalking him, apparently with the full backing of the staff, of unknown intentions and abilities. Somehow, Harry was left feeling that things were going too well. It made him wonder what was going to go wrong. Hogwarts was certainly the best thing to ever happen to him, but it hadn't changed a singular fact of life for Harry; that things will always go wrong. Horribly. Furthermore, as a general rule, the better things seemed, the worse they were going to get. His first year at Hogwarts had been a wonderful, amazing, incredible experience that had benefited him in so many ways. On the other hand, a man had tried to kill him for reasons almost entirely outside his control, even aside from incidents like the one with the troll. The Dursleys, though they had treated him terribly, had never actually tried to kill him. Nor had anyone else while he'd lived with them.

So in a way Harry was neither shocked nor surprised when he found a stunningly realistic statue of an oddly dressed man standing in front of a wall. The wall having a message written in blood, of course, and the message speaking of the 'heir of Slytherin' and death to the impure and the like. He was _worried_, yes, but the whole thing seemed terrible mundane. He was quite a bit more concerned when, after he'd retrieved a teacher who'd called for the ninja and some other teachers, he overheard that the statue had once been one of the ninja. Which probably explained his (Her?) strange, body-concealing-yet-not-robes clothing, but it also suggested that the ninja was, in some sense or another, _dead_. Which was bad, of course, doubly so given that nobody knew how to fix it. Really, though, the most horrible part was the mysterious ninja-leader entering the scene and expressing an _intense_ fascination with what could've turned one of his men to stone, apparently without inflicting any form of wound beforehand. It wasn't horrible because he was interested. It was horrible because he seemed entirely unaffected by what was effectively the death of one of his loyal people.

Then the man had broken off a hand, apparently out of curiosity. While the staff around him had been obviously outraged, Harry didn't see what they did or hear what they said. He was too busy rushing to a bathroom and vomiting his guts out.

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The whole school was tense. Everyone was terribly frightened they would be next, naturally, and several of the students claimed that nothing... _human_... could've done that. Many others were willing to believe that for any number of reasons. Harry was only willing to believe it because Hermione was one of the ones claiming this, having apparently read up on spells enough to know that it was beyond human ability to do something like that. Or, at least, beyond human ability to do it in as short a time frame as the man's combat-ready stance implied it had happened. Harry had told his friends of what he'd seen, everything he could remember, leaving out only the hand-thing. He wasn't ready to talk about that. It was bad enough remembering it, especially when he had dreams about it. The man would be miraculously restored by some miracle cure... only to be left with only a bloody stump for a hand. It was a terribly disturbing nightmare, and had even lead to another vomiting session one time.

There was talk going around of the school closing down, or at least of students being pulled out by their parents. There was a lot of disagreement over this issue. Some kids wanted out, fearing for their lives now, while others wanted to stay, and were afraid their parents would pull them away out of worry. Both sides were very vocal about their stance. Harry was somewhat surprised when he realized he himself was rather ambivelant. Life at Hogwarts was a great deal better than life with the Dursleys, and every second away from his relatives was to be treasured. Truth be told, Harry felt that if it was merely threat of death looming over him he would be completely adamant about wanting to stay at the school, even if it did close down. However, the ninja leader, though he was not a _constant_ presence after... the incident... he nonetheless was watching Harry a good deal of the time, and whenever he himself was not there, it seemed there was always some strange person in the classroom, always off to the side just as the leader typically was. Frankly, the attention disturbed Harry on a very deep level, justifiably so he felt, given the treatment one of the ninja's men had recieved when his condition had proved to be _fascinating_. Though Harry feared not death, he was left with the impression that there were indeed worse things out there, that this was not just an expression, but a reality. One that he had a healthy fear of.

It was during this time of fear and stress that Lockhart finally opened the doors to his classroom, and frankly, Harry wasn't impressed. Perhaps it was the blatant ego-mania displayed in the books, pictures, offers to sign things, etc. Alternatively, it may have been how poorly the man had handled the Doxies that he had claimed to be an expert in dealing with. Really, though, what put Harry off the most was how badly the man seemed to be reacting to stress. Given how optimistic Lockhart seemed about the situation with the man turned to stone, Harry suspected that this wasn't why the teacher was so tense and snappish. (Or gaunt, as though not eating well, or nodding off periodically, as though not sleeping enough, or... the list went on and on) Actually, the man seemed to react _very_ badly to the ninja in specific, and Harry felt almost certain that this was a clue to the truth of the matter, though he hadn't the slightest idea what it could mean. Hermione seemed convinced that the guards were bullying the wonderful Professor Lockhart. Ron didn't know, didn't care, and felt that "the bloody git probably deserved it anyway."

Also, the first year students still hadn't been seen. Harry found himself wondering if they'd been kidnapped and horribly experimented upon. Though, that didn't make sense, Hagrid would've mentioned it to someone. Or, more likely, have been bawling like a baby.

Somehow, these thoughts didn't make him feel any better.


	5. Big Events

Harry found himself hearing voices. Or, more accurately, _a _voice. The one from his dream, to be perfectly exact. It spoke of blood, and hate, and anger, and kept moving. Sometimes he would hear it in Snape's classroom (While Snape glared. At the ninja guards), other times in the bathroom, and sometimes just randomly in the halls. This might've bothered him less if his friends were also able to hear the terrible voice. After a week of listening to the thing natter on about 'nasty mudbloods', 'stupid foreigners', and some truly vile epitaths he refused to repeat, Harry would've given just about anything for someone else to hear it and prove he wasn't just crazy. The only thing convincing him he w_asn't_ nuts was the spiders. Any time he heard the voice, there would be this enormous horde of spiders fleeing the area, which had naturally creeped Ron out, while Hermione had watched it and gushed, spouting things like 'amazing', 'unprecedented', 'a fascinating opportunity', and so on. Even so, it wasn't much of a clue. Maybe if he knew more about spiders...

There was something else, actually. There was one guard with a very odd design to his robes, all bulgy and misshapen for no reason Harry could discern, and anytime Harry heard the voice while this particular guard was in the vicinity, the ninja would twitch, or reach for something at his waist, or something of the sort. Whatever the case, he always seemed uneasy in the presence of the voice, though the one time Harry had tried to ask the ninja if they heard the voice too, the whole encounter had been extremely awkward and ended poorly. While Harry didn't recognize several of the words the man (For with a voice like that, there was no way they were a woman) used, given the way they were hurled, Harry was willing to hazard a guess that they weren't very nice at all. The man seemed quite convinced Harry was nuts, which wasn't exactly helping his self-confidence any.

Professor Lockhart's classes turned weird. He seemed to be trying to one-up himself or something, bringing in a bigger, more dangerous creature with every class, explaining how to defeat them, and then demonstrating how to do it. He was so terrible at it that by the end of the second week even Hermione was beginning to doubt his supposed greatness. The whole thing only stopped when Lockhart brought in something so large it couldn't be brought into the castle, forcing the class to be handled outside, and even then, it was entirely because the thing managed to break every bone in his right arm, as well as damaging his shoulder. Harry never did find out the name of that particular critter, and the Professor spent the next week with Poppy, getting everything fixed. Defense Against the Dark Arts was simply not taught during that time. It was easy to guess that Snape's particularly foul mood was from not being nominated as a substitute, though that didn't make it any easier to deal with his shorter-than-usual fuse.

When Lockhart did finally return to class, he seemed basically dead on his feet, and spent much of his time glancing nervously at the ninja guards in the room, sweating so badly Harry was surprised he didn't collapse of dehydration. The class itself became nothing more than a series of assignments to read the books detailing Lockhart's various adventures, which were mostly him singing his own praises, as opposed to providing practical, useful information for how to deal with the various beasts described. That was completely useless, and even Hermione's interest in the classes began to wane, as she turned her attention once more to the 'heir of Slytherin' mystery and the third-years books that were just so fascinating to her.

Harry eventually approached his Head of House, wanting to know what was going on with Lockhart. She had flatly refused to say anything about her fellow teacher, instead sending him back to his dorm firmly. So Harry tried talking to Hagrid again, which took forever to make happen, but when it did, the results were much better. Hagrid was somewhat vague, obviously trying not to be mean to anyone involved, but if Harry even remotely understood the conversation, the guard's leader had been unsatisfied with Lockhart's credentials. This had lead to some sort of confrontation, the leader had insinuated some horrible things about the Professor, and Lockhart had been completely outraged, then horrified, sputtering the whole way. He had, however, been able to produce an answer that satisfied Dumbledore enough that nothing had been done yet. Though Hagrid secretly believed that this was more because getting a more competent replacement would've been basically impossible right then... but don't tell anyone he said that!

Shortly after that, Harry found himself in the unusual position of seeing somone running away from the school. More specifically, Harry had woken up that morning, saw that the sun was barely up, heard some noise from outside, looked out a window, and spotted a person running away quite quickly. It wasn't until Dumbledore announced at the Great Hall that Defense Against the Dark Arts classes were temporarily suspended that a suspicion arose in Harry's mind, one which he shared with Ron and Hermione as soon as they had a moment of privacy. The three agreed to check if this idea held any merit, but were immediately distracted when Dumbledore proceeded to announce that the first-years were _finally_ ready to join the rest of the school, at which point a crowd of kids came flooding in. This was attention-worthy in its own right, but it only got weirder when another table was made on the spot by Dumbledore, and _all_ the first-years sat at this table. Not at the House tables. Not one student.

Then there was a roar of sound, but it came not from those confused and baffled by this turn of events, but instead from farther away in the castle. Harry noticed, ever so briefly, a grey-haired... man? Boy? Person, appear before the nameless ninja leader, before the two of them nodded and vanished noiselessly. Immediately afterwards, one of the cloaked ninja appeared atop the Gryffindor table and told the students to return to their dorms, as a group of ninja appeared around the table, those odd knives gripped in a hand each. Harry periphereally noted that this proccess was also occuring at the other House tables, and became worried. Another boom of sound, and the Great Hall literally _rocked_, causing panic to spread amonst the students, though oddly not amongst the first-years, whom were swiftly yet without hurry exiting the room, escorted by their own group of ninja, at which point Harry went beyond worry all the way into deep concern. Nonetheless, he hurried to exit the room with all his fellow Gryffindors, having personally experienced twitchy ninja and not desiring a repeat.

Unlike the other, perhaps saner students, Harry took the very first chance he spotted to escape the guards and rush, not away, but _towards_ the previous bursts of sound, which he was increasingly believing were some kind of explosion. When a third one erupted, Harry noted the different direction it came from, adjusted course accordingly, and wondered to himself what could possibly be doing this. He was no expert on Hogwarts security, but Hermione had spoken on previous occasions, at great length, about the nigh-impenetrable defenses, and the ninja protection was presumably adding to that. What could have snuck in?... or was this some kind of prank? That seemed unlikely, but the Weasley twins had seemed to take the extra security as a challenge to their pranking ability... even so, explosions? On this scale? Harry had been running for several minutes (Fourth explosion, louder, and a bit to the left), and he still hadn't reached whatever was going on, and yet he had heard it all the way in the Great Hall.

As Harry felt he was coming closer, he slowed to a jog, his little lungs huffing and puffing, deciding it was best to be in good condition for... whatever this was. This was perhaps influenced by the return of the voice, which was hurling expletives and shrieking in fury, though it seemed distant. It also seemed to be coming from the same direction as the explosions, though what that might mean, Harry was uncertain. When he finally felt comfortable close (Which is to say that a fifth explosion rocked the ground with enough force to knock him off his feet. Hopefully he didn't have a concussion...), he slowed all the way to a walk, taking care to move quietly and peek around corners instead of charging blindly onward. This sounded _dangerous_, and the voice, which had grown piercing enough that Harry's ears had begun to hurt, was not making him feel any safer with its vulgar language, repeated threats on the lives of some unknown group of people ("I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!"), and... something else about it he couldn't place.

Finally Harry's careful corner-peeking yielded results, when he found himself seeing the rather extraordinary sight of an absolutely _enormous_ snake battling (Yes, battling, as in fighting, as in back-and-forth-combat that is not a slaughterfest) a number of oddly dressed people. Harry hesitated to call them _human_, given not only several of the superhuman feats they were performing (Harry was fairly certain spontaneously jumping many times one's own height without apparent effort was not in the realm of normality nor magic) but also several of the _in_human traits they displayed. Horns, bizarre skin colors, and just plain weird physical features. One of them had six arms. _Six arms_! Another seemed to have two heads. A third individual was simply covered in spines, spines that changed shape, grewlarger, grew smaller, turned sharper, smoother... very bizarre. Harry distantly noticed a rather large number of stone statues littering the area, though he only realized the grey powder everywhere was the remnants of yet more statues when a strike from the snake's tail smashed a pair of statues into dust.

At this point Harry was seriously reconsidering his "Investigate the noises and help if there's trouble" plan in favor of an idea that went something like "Run. Very quickly."

"_What are you DOING?_"

Uh oh.


	6. A Dissapointing Run

The voice continued speaking.

"_Run you idiot, run!_"

It took Harry a moment to realize that the voice was not, in fact, speaking to him. This was slightly better than he'd imagined, though it raised the question of who, exactly, they _were_ talking to. It was a different voice from the other, shrieking one (Which Harry was beginning to form an impossible suspicion as to the nature of), but something about it seemed odd in the same way as the first. It tickled at a memory of Harry's, though when he couldn't say. Something about a zoo, or maybe an aquarium? Whatever the case, it was also coming from much closer to Harry, and not the direction of the enormous fight.

_"Get away before they kill you!"_

It was difficult for Harry to identify the gender of the voice. Confusingly so. It kept shifting back and forth, as though uncertain, or something. Male, female, something in between, switching from one word to the next or even partway through a word. Listening to it made Harry's head hurt. Or maybe that was from knocking his head against the ground when he fell, earlier. Then again, the shrieking, swearing voice of angry doom was pretty painful to listen to. At any rate, Harry felt it best to identify who this strange third party was, if for no other reason than because the ninja guards seemed to be completely ignoring the voice, in spite of how loud it was. More accurately, they didn't seem to notice. This disturbed Harry, given that his invisibility cloak had been insufficient against them. Admittedly, he had no way of knowing how they'd spotted him in the first place, so maybe there was a good reason for that. Even so, this person didn't seem concerned for the ninja. Or whatever these people were. Some of them dressed like the ninja he'd seen before, but most of the others... still, there were ninja in there. A few, at least.

_"Nnnnggg. If you're not going to save yourself, at least kill the spiny one, you waste of flesh!"_

Harry doubted, for example, that this particular line was referring to the snake. There was nothing about it that was spiny (unless you counted its fangs... one of which was missing, come to think of it), whereas one of its assailants was very spiny indeed. Then again, this was edging uncomfortably close to suggesting that this second voice was attempting to order the giant snake around. Harry found this laughably unlikely, or he would if he wasn't attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Mind you, the snake seemed to be completely ignoring the voice, so maybe it was just a crazy person. Then again, their words indicated that this failure to comply was out of the ordinary. Whatever the case, it was all very disturbing, suggesting either that the person in question was a complete loon and therefore dangerously unpredictable, or normally perfectly capable of directing the snake successfully, which would indicate the person in question was behind the attacks and therefore predictably dangerous. Either way, they were on school grounds, which would itself indicate either that one of the students, faculty, or ninja guards was a dangerous and/or crazy person, or possibly that said dangerous and/or crazy person had infiltrated the school with great success. The former possibility was deeply disturbing for obvious reasons. The latter was even worse, in a way, given Harry's personal experience with the guards. If an invisibility cloak was insufficient to sneak past them, what sort of stealth genius _would_ it take to get in?

_"Damn it all. You better kill at least a dozen more before you die, you stupid thing. Farewell. Idiot."_

Aaaaand now the crazy and/or dangerous person was apparently escaping. The ninja guards were still not noticing. They were also still flinging sharp metal things like crazy, with worse beyond that. The six-armed one had shot an arrow _clean through_ the snake's body! Not that this had stopped the thing, mind you, but Harry doubted it's flesh was as fragile as, say, styrofoam. Given its thickness and likely toughness, this was alarmingly dangerous. Harry's first impulse was to get the attention of the guards, but this seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea. If they attacked first, asked questions later, Harry would probably not live to step two. This meant Harry could either find someone less likely to kill him instantly, such as a teacher, and then lead them back to the battle site and head off to follow the voice, or he could chase it himself. Option one was bad for two reasons. Firstly, Harry would almost certainly end up in enormously massive trouble and cause immense trouble for his House. This would be bad, obviously. Secondly, the person would probably be long gone by then, making the whole point moot.

So Harry started heading to where he'd last heard the voice from.

He did so very, very quickly, not wanting to be spotted and killed. Or given detention. Or worse. It was really too bad he didn't have his cloak on hand, but it wasn't like he could drag it around with him all the time. Or maybe he could?... something to consider, anyway. Fortunately, luck was with Harry, and nothing terrible befell him along the way, though the shrieking had grown well beyond shrill and angry all the way into completely unintelligible. Which meant it hurt even more to listen to, but Harry pressed onward with the thought that he was moving away from the area and would therefore not have to listen any longer. Unfortunately, luck promptly abandoned Harry when he found himself in front of an eight-way split in the path, leaving him to wonder how he had never seen such a thing in Hogwarts before. Was this like the moving staircases, or something? Whatever the case, being very aware of how every second exponentially increased the likelihood of the target escaping, he chose a passage at random and ran down it, hoping his poor abused muscles could hold out for a few more minutes.

Harry ran for quite a bit, taking turns at random and trying his best to hurry. It helped that his head seemed to clear as the shrieking faded from his hearing, but the burning in his legs was soon going to replace that for sheer level of misery. Plus he was fast growing certain that he'd chosen the wrong passage, or perhaps failed to correctly identify the voice's location in the first place. Honestly, why was he even doing this in the first place? Hadn't he been about to turn and run when this stupid voice caught his attention? What, was his curiosity stronger than his sanity? Stronger than his survival instinct? Or was it something worse, like some stupid desire to be a hero?

It was about then that Harry spotted a flash of a black robe, a student robe, turning down at the end of a hall to his right. While it was theoretically possible that it was another student that had slipped the guards during the evacuation, Harry doubted anyone else was brave enough (or stupid enough, perhaps) to have gone looking for trouble like he had. Plus, it was the first sign of anybody he'd seen thus far (Come to think of it, where were the ghosts?...), and he was perfectly fine with taking what he could, if it meant he might actually stop running soon. Plus, it kind of suspicious regardless. What possible reason could a student have for running about right now? It didn't occur to Harry that this logic could be applied to _him_, as well, which is perhaps just as well. He had enough problems as is, adding guilt or a difficult logic argument would be just ridiculous.

Next glance of the person was a bit better. They had red hair, curly. They were clutching something in their arms. Most telling of all, they suddenly started running quite quickly, mercilessly crushing Harry's fantasies of rest. Ignoring, as best as he could (Which, given his past with the Dursleys, was pretty darn good) the agonizing pain in his legs and lungs, he pushed himself even faster. This turned out to be a bad idea, and he slowed down to a pace his lungs could actually support. The good news was that the person was shorter than him, and therefore probably had shorter legs. Stride for stride, Harry should have the edge. This made him feel slightly better about not running flat-out. It was too bad he didn't know any magic for running faster or anything. Something like that would be nice. He decided to check if Hermione had heard of any such thing, the next time he saw her. Things had been turning spectacularly strange this year, what with the ninja guards, the giant snake, people being turned to stone, that sort of thing. Running faster seemed like a good thing to be able to do quickly and on short notice for all these things.

Quite inconveniently, Harry found himself finally unable to run. That this occurred right in front of a girl's bathroom struck him as some kind of cosmic joke on him. Though that might be the lightheadedness speaking. At any rate, he gasped and heaved and gulped air for several seconds. He also cursed the whole state of affairs. Harry did not like the idea that whoever this person had escaped him so thoroughly. He had only the slightest clue to their identity, and didn't even see what they'd been holding. He had no way of knowing if they were even the person speaking to the snake or someone completely unrelated. For all he knew, they could come waltzing past him right now, and he wouldn't even know it!

The bathroom door opened with a creak, and Harry jumped like a gunshot had gone off. It was with some relief that he realized that it was just someone coming out of the bathroom. A girl, with red hair, actually. That almost set alarm bells ringing, until he realized that it was Ron's younger sister, Ginny. This confused him for a moment, until he remembered Ron saying something about his sister going to Hogwarts for the first time this year. He obviously hadn't seen her because of... whatever was going on with the first-years. Harry wondered, briefly, why she seemed so nervous, especially when she noticed him (She eeped), but before that train of thought could go anywhere a great wailing erupted from the bathroom. This scared Harry enough for him to pull out his wand, but Ginny assured him that it was just Moaning Myrtle.

Of course, Harry had no clue who or what 'Moaning Myrtle' was, so Ginny had to explain the whole 'ghost girl haunting a toilet' thing to him. She seemed very nervous, finally hurried away, explaining that she needed to be in the 'kue-noy-chee' dorm before she got in trouble. Harry supposed that 'kue-noy-chee' was the name of this new House that all the first years occupied, and began limping his way back to the Gryffindor dorm.

Though, this whole thing was kind of odd. There were four Houses for the four founders. What was with the fifth House? Or was it not a House at all, in which case what was with the first years? Even if it was a House, why were _all_ the first-years in it?...


End file.
